Category: Women in Medicine
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Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte: Tradition, assimilation, and healing
Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States “My office hours are any and all hours of the day and night.”—Susan LaFlesche Picotte1 It was August of 1889 and Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte was suffering a sleepless night. She had just treated her first patient and she doubted her diagnosis. She was a new doctor after all, and…
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Dr. Joycelyn Elders: An unwelcome prophet
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “No prophet is welcome in his hometown.”— The Gospel of Saint Luke, 4:24. New American Standard Bible Joycelyn Elders, MD (b. 1933) was Surgeon General of the United States of America from 1993 to 1994. She was the second woman and the first Black person to have that position. Her life story…
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Women surgeons
Moustapha AbousamraVentura, California, United States Last spring, I spent three months in the Texas Hill Country. It is a place that at once can be beautiful and hostile. The fields of blue bonnets in full bloom are breathtaking. The cacti that abound around barbed wire fences at first glance appear ominous with their threatening thorns,…
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Book review: The Doctors Blackwell
Elizabeth CoonEelco WijdicksRochester, Minnesota, United States Edith Lutzker celebrated the centennial anniversary of the struggle of five British heroines in her 1969 groundbreaking book Woman Gain A Place in Medicine. Much less has been written on women physicians in Europe and Asia, but the Italian universities admitted women to study and teach medicine beginning in…
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Mary Josephine Hannan: Portrait of a pioneer
Katie KingAtlanta, Georgia, United States Mary Josephine Hannan was an Irish medical pioneer, an outspoken woman with a strong sense of morality, a fervid supporter of women’s rights, and a champion of children and public health. She spent her life fighting for these causes, making many enemies and friends along the way. With a passion…
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The life of a trailblazer: Ogino Ginko, one of the first female doctors in Japan
Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States Ogino Ginko was Japan’s first female doctor of Western medicine. She lived a life full of struggles, achieved a flash of fame, and then quietly retreated into history. She advocated for the rights, safety, and health of women and today should be remembered as an activist and role model to…
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Salernitan women
Vicent RodillaAlicia López-CastellanoValencia, Spain The first medical school in the Western world is thought to be the Schola Medica Salernitana (Figure 1), which traces its origins to the dispensary of an early medieval monastery.1 The medical school at Salerno achieved celebrity between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, before it was overshadowed by universities at Bologna…
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and smallpox
JMS PearceHull, England There are few examples of people with no medical training who independently make significant advances in medical practice. One such person was the elegant, aristocratic Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762)—daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, first Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull—whose portrait is in the splendid Library Room at Sandon Hall, Staffordshire. It was painted in…
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Mary Niles and the Canton rats
Edward McSweeganKinston, Rhode Island, United States Bubonic plague arrived in Honolulu in December 1899. A month later it had spread to San Francisco, where the infection caused a series of deadly outbreaks until 1907.1 But for decades before plague reached the American west coast, it had burned through rural China. By 1893, the plague reached…
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Dr. Avery, Medicine Woman
Edward McSweeganKingston, Rhode, Island, United States In July 1878, astronomers headed into the American West to observe a total eclipse of the sun. Among them was America’s only woman astronomer, Maria Mitchell of Vassar College, and four of her former astronomy students. Lacking the federal support and discounted railroad tickets of her male colleagues, Mitchell…